Digital watermarking is a process for modifying physical or electronic media to embed a machine-readable code into the media. The media may be modified such that the embedded code is imperceptible or nearly imperceptible to the user, yet may be detected through an automated detection process. Most commonly, digital watermarking is applied to media signals such as images, audio signals, and video signals. However, it may also be applied to other types of media objects, including documents (e.g., through line, word or character shifting), software, multi-dimensional graphics models, and surface textures of objects.
Digital watermarking systems typically have two primary components: an encoder that embeds the watermark in a host media signal, and a decoder that detects and reads the embedded watermark from a signal suspected of containing a watermark (a suspect signal). The encoder embeds a watermark by altering the host media signal. The reading component analyzes a suspect signal to detect whether a watermark is present. In applications where the watermark encodes information, the reader extracts this information from the detected watermark.
Several particular watermarking techniques have been developed. The reader is presumed to be familiar with the literature in this field. Particular techniques for embedding and detecting imperceptible watermarks in media signals are detailed in the assignee's co-pending application Ser. No. 09/503,881 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,614,914) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,260, which are hereby incorporated by reference. Examples of other watermarking techniques are described in U.S. Pat. No. 09/404,292, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Additional features of watermarks relating to authentication of media signals and fragile watermarks are described in U.S. patent application 60/198,138, 09/498,223 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,574,350), Ser. No. 09/433,104 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,636,615), and 60/232,163, which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The invention provides a method of measuring the quality of service of broadcast media signals by analyzing digital watermarks embedded in the received broadcast signal. This method enables the quality of the broadcast video or audio signal to be measured without having the original version of the signal before broadcast transmission. Instead, the method analyzes the strength or quality of the embedded digital watermark to determine the quality of the received broadcast signal.
One aspect of the invention is a method of measuring quality of service of a broadcast media signal using a digital watermark embedded in the broadcast media signal. The method extracts a digital watermark from the broadcast media signal, and evaluates the extracted digital watermark relative to a reference digital watermark to measure degradation in quality of service of the broadcast media signal based on differences between the extracted and reference digital watermarks. The method is implemented using fragile watermarks embedded in the broadcast multimedia signal. These fragile watermarks, which are imperceptible in the broadcast signal, are based on digital watermarks used for authentication of media objects. One digital watermark embedder, for example, transforms at least a portion of the media signal into a set of frequency coefficients in a frequency domain. For example, it applies a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) or other frequency transform to blocks of a media signal, such as an image, audio or video signal. It adjusts a relationship between selected frequency coefficients to a reference value. This adjustment is selected so that an alteration to be detected, such as a re-sampling operation, lossy compression, broadcast transmission, or digital to analog- analog to digital conversion, alters the relationship. To detect the alteration, a detector computes the relationship in a potentially corrupted version of the signal.
Another digital watermark reader process evaluates signal peaks at selected frequency coefficients of the media signal. In a prior embedding process, the media signal has been modified to include peaks at the selected frequencies, such as by the technique summarized in the previous paragraph. The method determines, based on degradation of the signal peaks, whether the extent to which the quality of the media signal has been degraded. The frequency location of the peaks may vary from one application to the next. Another aspect of the invention is a watermark decoder, which includes a detector and analyzer for determining alteration of a watermarked media signal. The detector correlates a calibration signal with a media signal suspected of carrying a watermark to determine orientation parameters describing orientation of the media signal at embedding of the watermark. The calibration signal includes a set of peaks at selected frequency coefficients. The analyzer orients the media signal using the orientation parameters and evaluates whether the media signal has been altered or degraded by examining signal peaks at selected frequency coefficients in the media signal.
Further features will become apparent with reference to the following detailed description and accompanying drawings. The following description details methods for using digital watermarks for authenticating multimedia objects and measuring the quality of the multimedia objects as a function of digital watermark alteration. It also describes alternative implementations and applications.